PPC Campaign Management: What’s Involved?

PPC Campaign Management: What’s Involved?

Online advertising has become the most effective way of marketing businesses. However, the extent of success depends on tools used to advertise the products and services. Advertisers looking for cost-effective online advertising opt for content marketing. However, this form of advertising can be painfully slow for marketers looking for quick results hence, the increasing tendency to use PPC campaigns. Studies show 64.6% of consumers click on ads when shopping for products online.

Additionally, PPC campaigns tend to generate more traffic and conversion as soon as the ads start running. It only emphasises the value of PPC campaigns compared to other forms of online advertising. However, running a successful PPC campaign requires thorough research; find out what your potential customers are looking for, how they are looking for it and what they want. Read on to find out how online marketers launch and manage a successful PPC campaign.

Understand Your Client’s Business

A successful PPC campaign is only possible when you fully understand the products or services your client sells and his target audience. This way, you can determine essential keywords to include in the campaign and identify your potential market. Additionally, you can clearly define goals in terms of conversion rates, leads and branding for the campaign. So, if you are focusing on brand building, you need to run a CPM campaign, and if you are looking to generate conversions, you need to run a CPA campaign.

Perform Thorough Keyword Research

Keywords are an essential part of launching a PPC campaign hence the need to find out the most important keywords that can attract your potential customers. You can use customer data to generate a seed list. The list provides a rough idea of all the keywords you think the customer will use to find your product. Next, use a suitable keyword tool to find out the search volume for those keywords, the keywords your competitors are using and suggestions on the most effective keywords from the seed list. The Google Keyword planner makes an excellent keyword search tool. It allows users to validate the keywords by showing the search volume data, the cost per click, trends and competitive data. The device will also suggest suitable variations for keywords with a low search volume.

Organise the PPC Keywords

When you have identified essential keywords you can use on your campaign, you need to organise them into targeted groups to help you attract potential customers quickly. The more relevant the ad groups are, the easier it is to evaluate their performance, adjust them and develop more specific ads for each target group. Bear in mind that search intent can change from informational to transaction-based keywords when choosing and grouping the keywords for individual ad campaigns.

Evaluate the Performance of Negative Keywords in Your Campaign

Ensure your ads appear for relevant keywords and not negative ones. This is because while some keywords appear attractive based on the cost per click, search volume and competition, they may not generate the desired results. They may also create ad impressions that don’t lead the target audience to click. Negative keywords weaken the score of your ad, impact your ad placement and the cost per click. You need to identify such keywords individually and use Google’s AdWords system to restrict their use. It means advertisers need to spend more time managing the list of keywords and not that of relevant keywords. Be sure to update this list for negative keywords regularly especially if you are on a low budget.

Track Your Conversions

Conversion tracking enables marketers to identify critical actions made by the target audience. For example, you may monitor online purchases, a call to the business or app download as a result of an ad. Such insight helps the marketer to know which ads, keywords and placements lead to conversions and if they are worth bidding on.

Fine-tune Your Campaign Settings

You need to adjust these settings to the goals of the PPC campaign to avoid overspending. For example, if your target market is in London, you don’t need to run the campaign across North Hampshire. Similarly, if the website is not optimised for mobile use, then your ads should run on desktops only. You can check your campaign settings by:

• Adjusting the settings to target locations, networks, languages and devices relevant to your target audience
• Using the ad extension feature to improve the click-through-rate of the ads
• Making sure the campaign uses the right budget, bidding option and ad scheduling

Set a Maximum Number for CPA Targets

You need to determine the maximum amount you are willing to pay for conversion without making losses. The target CPA should not be too low as you may be compelled to ignore clicks that could generate conversions. Also, it should not be too high as CPA campaigns tend to be pretty pricey. Google Ads can recommend an average target CPA based on historical conversion data, e.g., CPA performance in the last few weeks. The average CPA target is a cost-weighted average that a bid strategy is optimised for and includes ad group target CPAs, an average of your device bid adjustments and changes the user makes to the target CPA over time. These variables may cause your target CPA to be different from the average target CPA.

Set a Realistic Budget

The number of keywords you want to optimise your PPC campaign determine your budget. When researching your keywords, you need to decide whether you can advertise for that specific keyword. The reason is that, apart from the type of industry the business operates, several other factors affect the Cost Per Click. As such, determine the maximum cost per click you want to spend for a specific keyword to avoid overspending. You can do this by identifying your conversion rate, the estimated profit margin and the amount of profit you intend to generate from each conversion. So, the formula ({profit per customer}*{1-profit margin}* {the conversion rate}) should help you determine the maximum spend per click.

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